


Null Operators

by The Black Sluggard (Hazgarn)



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Crack Treated Seriously, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Immortality, Post-Endgame, Revenge, Supernatural Elements, Survivor Guilt, Temporary Character Death, Vampires, unbetad
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-27
Updated: 2017-11-08
Packaged: 2019-01-25 01:25:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12519812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hazgarn/pseuds/The%20Black%20Sluggard
Summary: Deacon told lies as naturally as most people breathed, and he kept secrets even from those a less paranoid man might arguably have called his friends. Many of those secrets he carried for the Railroad, but a few he kept for his own sake...The strangest and most closely kept was this: Most peoplebreathed. Deacon wasn't most people.





	1. End of the Line

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a scene in Remnants by [Maculategiraffe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maculategiraffe/pseuds/Maculategiraffe). Started out as crack, but the more I thought about it the more plausible it seemed. For a given value of "plausible", admittedly, but we're talking about a setting canon that includes psykers, talking deathclaws, aliens, ghosts, Ug-Qualtoth, Harold, the Garys, the Mist Mother, and whatever nonsense is going on at Cabot House (don't spoil it for me).

"What are you doing?"

He cracked one eye open, looking up at Glory from beneath his shades. It figured she would be the one they sent to wake him. His stillness in repose had alarmed newer agents on more than one occasion. Carrington, bless him, had helpfully diagnosed the "metabolic disorder" that caused him to breathe so shallowly and slowly in sleep that he sometimes looked like he was dead. Still, some were just superstitious enough to avoid the job of rousing him—like it was only a matter of time, and none of them wanted to be the one to find it was for real. Honestly, it was almost touching. Glory was less affected by that sort of nonsense than most. With tensions as high as they were, he doubted anyone else was in the mood to tempt fate...

Of course, to be fair, it wasn't every day he chose to bed down inside an actual _coffin_.

"Conforming to stereotypes," he answered with a lazy smile.

Two days ago the Institute had made an assault on their operation at Bunker Hill, drawing in all the support the surviving safe-houses could spare. Shit there had gone badly sideways when the Brotherhood had invited themselves to the party. The synths being held there had been lost—and too many agents with them. Those who had managed to make it out had needed somewhere to go to ground, and for many of the wounded HQ—and Doc Carrington—had been the only viable option. Now the crypt in the church's undercroft was packed with as many extra bodies as it could fit—standing room only for those who could stand. With his usual bed unavailable he had been forced to make do.

Though he hadn't been sleeping, really. It was more of a doze. He had never been able to sleep very well at HQ—or in any of the safe-houses for that matter. Too much noise, too much movement—too many anxious bodies packed into too close a space for him to ever relax long enough to pass into the peace of a restful sleep. His inner predator was a pretty chill animal—mostly—but there was only so much it could ignore, and the presence of the wounded so very nearby certainly wasn't doing him any favors. The best he had managed was an hour or two to himself where he could afford to let down his guard and tune out for a little while. Fortunately, his unrest wasn't obvious from the outside.

And Glory didn't get his joke, of course, but as usual when human behavior—and his own; no _especially_ his own—proved confusing, she simply chose to ignore it.

"Be weird on your own time," she said, rolling her eyes. "C'mon. Carrington wants to see you."

When he dragged himself out of his coffin—not for the first time—it was with more than a little difficulty. It must still have been daylight overhead, because his whole body ached from abuse that should have repaired itself before nightfall. If anyone had caught a glimpse of the shape he had been in when he had hauled himself in that morning... Well, actually, it occurred to him that someone must have. It would certainly explain why Carrington—still overburdened caring for casualties from Bunker Hill—had sent Glory to reel him in for this little chat.

"What's up, Doc?"

Carrington lifted his eyes from his current patient and he could see the exhausted shadows living underneath them. The doctor gestured for him to follow. The uncrowded corner where Carrington kept his notes and supplies offered the closest thing their cramped accommodations could to privacy. Still, the doctor made sure peoples' attentions were elsewhere before he spoke.

"You came in later than expected last night," Carrington said, his voice pitched low. "How bad was it?"

"It's bad," he admitted, quietly. "Finished my rounds last night. Ticon was hit while our heads were turned...looked like it happened maybe two days before shit erupted at Bunker Hill. Randolf's still dark. Augusta was burned, just like you feared. And Switchboard is still crawling with Institute hardware, so there's no use considering it as a fall-back point. Dayton's been overrun by ghouls. And the Brotherhood is close, Doc. _Way_ too close. They've got thermal equipment on those 'birds of theirs...if it was anyone but me they would have picked up the heat last night. Even if we had somewhere to run to, if we try to use the escape tunnel they'd spot us as soon as we raised our heads."

He took a slow, steadying, but otherwise unnecessary breath, rubbing the back of his head. The stubble was coming back in now, but he doubted he get the chance to shave.

"You can see the report for yourself if you like," he finished. "I dropped it off on Des's table with my Christmas list and next month's rent."

Carrington let out a quiet huff of breath, the corner of his mouth ticking briefly before he shook his head.

"I was inquiring after _your_ condition, Deacon," Carrington said, looking at him squarely.

It was his turn for a faint smile, though it wouldn't have reached his eyes if anyone could see them.

"My condition or my ' _condition_ '?" he asked, emphasizing the word playfully with full air-quotes.

"Both, I suppose," Carrington said, seriously but not without real concern. "Drummer Boy saw you when you came in. I think I managed to convince him he was seeing things, but you have to tell me how bad it really was. If they find us-"

Carrington hesitated.

" _When_ they find us," the doctor corrected, "we need everyone in the best shape possible."

The man wasn't wrong.

"Ferals usually go out of their way to avoid me if I'm on my own," he finally admitted, "but the ones at Dayton brought a night-light. Makes 'em a bit braver, and you know how crazy they get for road kill, even if it's still walking around."

And Carrington also knew that, whatever his other advantages, he was just as vulnerable to rads as anyone else—if not more so. As much as he might have liked to downplay the damage, they both knew a brush with a glowing ghoul and its pack wasn't something he could shrug off easily. The look the doctor flashed him was both tired and unimpressed. Just this once he would cut Carrington a break.

"Look, Doc, I'm _fine_ ," he said, lifting the edge of his shirt so Carrington could survey the worst of the damage himself. "I grabbed some RadAway before I hit the hay this morning, and see? I'm not even leaking anymore."

The half-healed flesh was still raised and uneven where teeth and nails had dug in, though not as reddened as it would have been on anyone else. They could almost be mistaken for scars. The wounds would have been gone entirely by now if he had fed, but attention on the surface was too hot to risk leaving, and Carrington's stocks had been depleted by the wounded from Bunker Hill. Their supply of stimpacks was low, and the others would need every one once the Brotherhood caught up with them...

And it seemed like Carrington's thoughts had begun to run in a similar direction.

"Would it-" Carrington paused briefly, as though reconsidering his words, before he continued. "Do you think a transfusion would help?"

There was little hope in the doctor's voice, however. In response he offered Carrington another tight smile.

"You know that's not how it works, Doc," he said quietly. He cast another glance over the room, needing to make doubly sure no one was listening. "And to really make a difference, someone's gotta be bled dry."

And it had been a while since he had taken care of that—far longer than he should have let it go. But between the Institute's hidden agenda and the Brotherhood's arrival in the Commonwealth, too many pieces had come into play too fast. Then Operation Wanderer had turned and bitten him in the ass—fuck, but he'd outsmarted himself there—and now they all were paying for it. In trying to fix his own mistakes and stay on top of the positions rapidly changing on the board he had gotten distracted from taking proper care of himself.

Man, was he regretting that now.

As he watched, Carrington cast his own eyes over the others. A faint tremor crossed the doctor's frame that he doubted anyone else would have noticed, and he could guess at the kind of calculus going on inside Carrington's head. Because he was watching he could see the moment Carrington decided he was ready to make that offer, but he interrupted it before it could even be voiced with a shake of his head.

"Hey, Doc," he said quietly, "let's save that for when the bad guys actually show up, okay?"

And for Carrington that was that, but as he left the doctor's corner he had to wonder...

Would it make a difference? Perhaps, but he doubted it would have been enough to make much of one. Maybe, if the Brotherhood's attack came in the night, when he was at his strongest. Maybe, if he had enough time to rest after the feeding, enough to really make it count. Or if someone younger, stronger, healthier than Carrington offered their lifeblood up for sacrifice...or more than one. But he knew how close he had come to getting caught just making it back that morning. He didn't need PAM's estimates to tell him they wouldn't have that kind of time.

Time. Shit, but there always felt like so much of it—almost too much, until it ran out.

There were things he would have done if he had known their clock was counting down. How many times had he considered sharing his secret with Glory? How many times had it crossed his mind, only for him to chicken out and leave the confession—the _offer_ —unspoken? He had wondered for decades whether it was even possible, or if synths were too different for the changes to even take. Then again, he had always been just as afraid of learning the answer...

( _Just how different could things have been if he had known the answer, all those years ago? If he had known there was even a question to ask? If he had trusted her, if she had trusted him, if they had trusted each other with the truths of their lies and he had made the offer, taken the chance before it was gone..._ )

It was far too late now to even consider. Not enough time now, if he told Glory, to convince her it was true and not just another of his jokes. Not enough time for her to go through the change and recover from it, if she would even have recovered at all. Carrington was right, after all—they needed every gun if there was any hope to survive until nightfall, and Glory was the best they had.

And it all came back to trust, didn't it?

 _You can't trust everyone_. It was an easy lesson to impress upon a new agent, and one of the first he tried to deliver, but the B-side of that very good advice was that you rarely got far without finding someone that you _could_ trust. And that was the regret that was really digging at him as he looked at the people around him. He had trusted Carrington out of necessity, but he had known for a long time now—and had hesitated to admit to himself—that he could have trusted the others as well. Maybe not everyone, but he knew he could have told Tom, and Glory, and Drummer—and he _absolutely_ could have told Des.

There just wasn't enough time for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but, though perhaps they could settle for the next best thing.

"Hey Tom."

Over at his desk the tech's head shot up at the sound of his name. His expression was wide-eyed and startled. Tinker Tom could be high-strung and jumpy on his levelest of days, under present circumstances it was hard not to feel a little proud of him for being as composed as he was. The only possible explanation was that he had found something to keep himself occupied—gotten lost in some project or other and lost track of the world. He began to regret distracting Tom from his work almost instantly, but with the damage already done he might as well go through with what he had to say.

"Look, man..." he began, lowering his voice. "If we don't make it out of this alive, I just wanted you to know that you were right about me."

Tinker Tom just stared at him uncomprehendingly for one, long, blank moment before comprehension finally dawned in his eyes.

"You mean...?" Tom asked, a cautious excitement evident in his voice.

"Yeah," he said, leaning in and affecting a vulnerable softness in his voice that even people familiar with his lies mistook as earnest. "Only...I'm actually from the _past_. Secret project by West Tek in the 2060s, very hush-hush. Didn't work out like they thought, though. It's really...kind of a bummer."

The roughness in his voice—of loss, of faded _grief_ for the Old World—held within that understated sentiment at the end wasn't precisely a lie. Perhaps that was what sold it. Perhaps that was what caused that hesitant, doubtful line between Tom's brows to smooth away and new energy to kindle in his eyes. What caused him to believe, even after so many lies, because deep down Tinker Tom had always needed to believe in _something_.

That something should not have been Deacon—Deacon was a lie even he barely believed in himself anymore—but the tentative smile on Tom's lips parted into a grin that almost made it worth it.

"See, I _knew_ it!"

Tinker Tom took off after that, no doubt to tell those few agents the tech could be said to trust—probably mostly Drummer Boy, whose approach to Tom's delusions at least leaned toward the diplomatic. He doubted anyone else Tom told would burst his bubble, though, what with certain doom looming over their heads. The Railroad held a lot of hardened and arguably damaged people—plus one literal monster—but none of them could be that heartless.

"That was a kind thing for you to say."

He looked over, unsurprised to find Desdemona was watching him. She was leaned up against one of the pillars near the planning table, pack of cigarettes in hand. She pulled one out herself before tipping it his way.

"Be better if I thought we had a chance," he admitted, accepting her offer. "I had all kinds of ideas for how I was going to play the part..."

And that actually wasn't a lie. He had entertained the thought, more than once, of humoring Tom's time-travel suspicions. Spinning a yarn about his life before the War might have been the closest thing to telling the truth he had done in a very long time.

Desdemona didn't comment on his fatalism, lighting her cigarette with a steady hand. It had always amazed him how she could manage it in a situation as desperate as this, how she could keep her hands from shaking. He remembered noticing it first after they lost Trinity Tower, again after the Switchboard. He was clinically dead and even his hands were never that steady...

"Look, Des, I know you never asked-"

She cut him off easily with a shake of her head. She handed him her lighter.

"Whatever it is," she said, "it's never kept you from doing your job and doing it well. Don't ruin the mystery now."

When he lit his cigarette his hands were trembling. It was Desdemona's absolution of the secrets he kept from her that finally made it real for him. This was it. This was the end. Five decades in operation, risking everything against the Institute, and the best they could do was try to bloody the Brotherhood's noses when they came.

And there was a voice in the back of his head—vermin instinct, a holdover from his life before the War when it was every creature for itself—demanding he abandon this ship before it burned. He could still get away, it said. Like he had Switchboard. Like he'd escaped the HQ massacre back in Agamemnon's day. If he made for the escape tunnel now, if he slipped away, the vertibirds might miss him on the way out like they had on his way in...

That voice was a bastard. He chose forcefully to ignore it.

The first warning came nearly half an hour later. It wasn't much to hear when it began, just a few pops of gunfire muffled by earth and stone—too faint still for the others to have heard it. As it grew louder conversations died and activity stopped as, one by one, they heard it as well. Even then it was nothing they hadn't heard every now and then whenever raiders or mutants wandered just a little too close. It was when the pops became fewer and farther between that their fears were confirmed—the sounds of laser-fire didn't carry as well or as far as traditional arms, and if the shots upstairs were slowing it meant fewer of their people in the church overhead were still firing back.

Finally there was an explosion as the hidden door was breached.

After that it was chaos. The the zing of lasers and the sounds of gunfire drowned out all but the occasional shout or scream of pain as the air grew thick with the scent of ozone, blood and gunpowder. He lost track of Des and Drummer as his focus narrowed on survival, but he saw Carrington go down from a burst of red energy to the chest. Glory spent her last moments in such a beautiful, deadly blaze that her name barely did her justice. And the Railroad finally got it's first clear glimpse of the monster in their midst when his last StealthBoy wore off, jaws still buried hungrily in the throat of the Initiate who shot Tom dead.

Though that glimpse was blessedly—and just as unfortunately—short lived.

One jack-booted, power-armored thug was usually interchangeable for another, but the suit that stepped through the dust and smoke was one that he recognized. Rather than the utilitarian paint-job of your rank-and-file tin can, this armor was plated with a thick layer of lead. He had seen it when that lead shielding was all new and dully pristine, and he had seen it return bearing fresh gouges and scars after a desperate trek into the Glowing Sea. And he had last seen its owner headed back into that place with one of the Brotherhood's top soldiers at his side. He had lost track of the man after that, the events of Bunker Hill following not long after had made it impossible to pick up his trail again...

Well, here he was, wasn't he? Wanderer had found _him_. How about that?

The last thing he saw—no doubt the last thing any of them would see—was death being leveled at them by a man they had helped. A man that he himself had vouched for. The man on whom he had gambled the future of the Commonwealth...

And lost.


	2. Butcher's Bill

When he crawled his way out of the grave—not for the first time—it was impossible to know how much time had passed.

The strong smell of decay that stifled the air would have been enough to give him a rough idea had his attention been attuned to it. However, in those very first moments of consciousness, he had far more pressing details on his mind. Details like the scratching, snuffling sound that had managed to rouse him out of numb unconsciousness. Like the core-deep chill suffusing him and the painful, frozen stiffness biting at all of his joints. The most pressing, of course, was another scent altogether than the putrid odor of long-spilled blood, cold and already drunk dry of life by the earth. Something fresher. Something _warm_. A scent that had managed to awaken in him a painful, desperate hunger the like of which he hadn't felt in decades...

He drifted back to himself slowly, prickling sensation seeping its way back into his flesh. The blood burned unpleasantly in his throat, harsh with radiation, sour, foreign and _wrong_. It was a fight just to keep it down, but it was still warmth—it was still _life_ —and his body was just as desperate to hold onto it as it was to rid itself of the contaminant. Higher functions finally began returning and he found himself bent over the corpses of three molerats, wiping his face clean and licking what blood he still could from his hands. 

The wounds on the molerats' throats were jagged and deep. Running his tongue inside his mouth he noted that his eyeteeth had all grown back to their full length and sharpness. He supposed, distantly, that it shouldn't have been a surprise—at his guess, a large part of his face had been melted off by a gatling-laser. It was a bigger surprise, certainly, to have even survived at all. And bleary irritation drifted through his mind, because he was going to have to file them down again if he wanted to blend in-

Blend in with _who_ , though, was the question.

That thought shook whatever cobwebs still remained from his mind, replaced by a sudden, almost inexplicable stab of anger. Pain and exhaustion still dragged too heavily on him to even make a sound but his fists clenched tight as the feeling burned its way past the lingering weariness and through whatever shock he might have felt.

He had survived. _Again_.

He hadn't wanted to die, but this time he had been ready for it. For the first time in his over-long life the choice had been his, and he had chosen not to cut his losses and run, and maybe in a stupid part of his brain he felt he deserved a reward for that. But once again he is the lone roach to crawl its way out of the rubble of everything that was _good_ about his life.

The darkness in the crypt was near-total save for a few phosphorescent mushrooms growing here and there. The place had been tossed thoroughly and looted of anything of even remote value. The Brotherhood had taken PAM, and Carrington's notes, and every map and scrap from Desdemona's table. Tinker Tom's pin-board had been stripped bare, though it looked like his specialized equipment had suffered in the firefight and been left behind, the eccentrically cobbled-together tech easily mistaken for worthless junk. The terminal where the tech kept his notes was a scorched and fractured mess, and he couldn't help but feel a bittersweet relief knowing that Tom's theories and his secrets had died with it and with him. Crazy or genius, or a little bit of both, Tom's work was nothing the Brotherhood's scribes had any right to see.

The Brotherhood had taken their own dead with them and simply left their enemies to rot. The molerats must have moved in soon after, or perhaps roaches or other scavengers had found the place first. Either way, there wasn't much left to identify the remains, and little that he could do to restore the dignity they had been denied. Still, it was no more or less than any of them had expected. The lives of most agents led them to shallow graves and roadside ditches, or else they were left to lie forgotten in whatever hidden hole had once provided them refuge. Men and women whose names most never knew, and whose deaths and deeds would never be recorded or remembered, even by those they had given their lives to protect.

He supposed it was up to him to remember. It was all he could do for them now.

It was a slow, painful affair making his way out of the crypt. The blood from the molerats had been enough to restore him to consciousness, but it hadn't restored much else. His joints were still agonizingly stiff, and his weak and wasted limbs started to shake after a few yards as his muscles struggled to support his scant remaining weight. And he had been losing time since waking, he knew. Seconds here, minutes there. Damage and deprivation had a way of distorting time, slowing his thoughts down to a crawl while everything around him kept ticking along at its usual pace. He had been...asleep for a fair amount of time. A week at least, but probably longer. It would only get worse until he fed properly...

It was still night when he finally left the church, though it was impossible to tell how many hours of darkness he had remaining, and without a proper meal he would be too weak to survive the sun. Either he would need to find another bolt-hole soon, or he would need to find himself a victim.

His best course was to head deeper into Boston. It held the most promise for locating either shelter or prey, and once the latter was found his next destination would be Goodneighbor. Regardless of the Railroad's future prospects or lack thereof, it was possible that he wasn't the only survivor. There were still contacts he needed to check—his tourists, informants, neutral contractors and other sympathizers. Whether they were willing to help him rebuild or not, it was still his responsibility to make sure that whatever intelligence the Brotherhood derived from its spoils couldn't be tracked back to any of them.

As much as he would have liked to check in on Stockton, Bunker Hill was too big a risk without more information on how the battle had played out for the trading post's inhabitants. It was entirely possible the Old Man was dead, but even if by some miracle of chance the Brotherhood had failed to connect him with the Railroad's activities the area might still be too hot to risk making contact. The bridge across the Charles River was a prime choke-point, far too exposed. Folks in Goodneighbor, on the other hand, asked few questions, and the odds were much higher that he would find the place a smoking ruin than find it under the Brotherhood's control.

Goodneighbor protected its own. If anyone affiliated with the Railroad was still alive and safe to approach it would be Dr. Amari.

His condition made the journey difficult. More than once only the sharpness of his senses and his ability to keep utterly still had kept him from attracting unwanted attention—and in the case of two mutant hounds no doubt it helped that he smelled exactly like something already dead was supposed to.

Fortunately, it wasn't long before the Commonwealth saw fit to provide.

Gunners had taken up residence in the old parking garage near Faneuil Hall. A small group, it looked like—there were only two on watch near the door. His stomach cramped eagerly at the sight but he forced himself still. Rushing in would result in a fight and he was far too weak and too poorly equipped to risk being that sloppy. His preferred method was out of the question. His current state would make it impossible to pass himself off as another Gunner long enough to get in range for the kill, even in the dark. His body was too gaunt and his clothes were in tatters, covered in laser burns and gore—he probably looked more like a feral ghoul than anything human. And without his shades to mask the way his eyes reflected in dim light the darkness itself would hinder his attempt to pass himself off as human far more than it would help.

Instead he forced himself to wait, though every shift in the breeze or movement from his prey had his fingers twitching with anticipation. Finally his patience paid off. One of guards—a green recruit, he had to be—made the stupid move of heading up the stairs alone. He watched the Gunner light a cigarette and lean against the rail. The light illuminated the young man's face clearly.

 _A-neg_ , the tattoo helpfully supplied. Not his favorite, but then he never had been picky.

In the shape he was in surprise was the only advantage he had at his disposal, and so he made his way with painstaking slowness and care. It was both easier and quieter to move over the rubble in a crawl, and to tell the truth he might not have been able to manage the stairs without falling down them otherwise. Soon, though, he was close enough to hear the Gunner's heartbeat, close enough to smell his blood, and he had to stop himself from swallowing the saliva that flooded his mouth lest the noise give him away. All that was left was to find his moment to strike...

Which, in his current condition would be an undignified matter of latching on like one of his uglier, buzzier cousins and holding on for dear life until his victim's fight was spent.

A hand thrown over the Gunner's mouth only just muffled the shout of alarm as he struck from behind. It had been a long time since he had made a kill with a full set of teeth and he had forgotten how much easier it was. How simple it was to puncture the flesh, how quickly the blood reached the surface when you could slice through without all the tearing and fuss. With his mouth sealed eagerly over the wound he drew his first mouthful, hot blood hitting his stomach with the force of a sledge. Each pull drew more of the Gunner's heat and life inside of him, and the warmth of it seeped slowly into those places his earlier meal had left cold.

Finally he felt it—that first, slow, stuttering flutter in his chest as his heart woke to life, chasing with greater and greater speed after the frantic rhythm of the Gunner's pulse.

The Gunner had fought him at the start, struggling against his brittle strength, but after the first mouthful his struggles had started to become erratic. He held on as tight as he could as the merc stumbled to his knees, finally going still and rigid as the paralysis set in. He would still be conscious, still trying to fight but unable to move, terrified and screaming inside his head the whole while. Yet the only sounds were the Gunner's panicked breathing, the wet noises of feeding, and the hammering of their hearts locked in tandem with each other. It was a terrible way to die, helpless and afraid and _aware_ as your life was slowly siphoned away a mouthful at a time...

(And it had been centuries since it had happened to him, but there were just some things you really never forgot...)

Soon there was only one heartbeat sounding in the still night air, and the Gunner lay dead on the ground. It wouldn't last—neither the pulse nor the rush of blissful euphoria that came with it—but the strength it had returned to him would stay. He still wasn't at one-hundred percent, that would take time and perhaps more blood, but he no longer felt like he was about to evaporate with the next strong breeze. The skin of his hands, though still pale, was no longer a bloodless chalk-white beneath the grime covering his skin.

Already the skeletal thinness of his limbs had begun to soften into something that might conceivably be mistaken for human, with a little convincing.

A sound drifted up from the entrance of the garage, startling him from his reverie and back to alertness. The man he had killed would be missed sooner or later, and he needed to not be there when that happened. The jeans and shoes he was wearing were still serviceable, though filthy, but his shirt was a ruined mess. The Gunner's shirt was hardly pristine either—feeding was never exactly neat, and he had been far too weak to exercise even his usual amount of care—but at least it didn't look like it's wearer had died in a firefight. It hung on him like a tent, but it would do. He wiped his face as clean as he could with the old one and stuffed it away inside an ancient trashcan.

He took the merc's pipe rifle and his ammo and his caps. Usually he would have taken the time to disguise the marks from his feeding, but there was no quiet means for him to do it. The best he could do was drag the body a ways away, out of sight, and hope that dogs or bloatflies found it first. Though even if they didn't, he couldn't imagine the Gunners wasting much time or thought on how their man had died.

In the end he didn't make it to Goodneighbor before the sun started to rise. The light was murder on his unprotected eyes and every inch of exposed skin felt like it was being pricked by needles, but the Gunner's life was more than enough to keep him from going up in flames.

He wouldn't have passed muster at the gates of Diamond City, but you could walk into Goodneighbor covered in blood and smelling like a corpse and no one would bat an eye. And he must have been a pretty sorry sight. The ghouls on the Neighborhood Watch often favored him with a scowling side-eye when he came into town, but as it was he was given little more than a frowning once-over before they let him inside.

Daisy's was his first stop. He shook out the Gunner's stash of caps to buy himself a pair of shades and some RadAway, and a Nuka to rinse away the aftertaste of dust, and molerat, and unwashed merc left clinging to his tongue. He saw the look of recognition cross Daisy's face when he stepped to the counter, her usual suspicion settling in. Though he figured he probably looked and smelled like something a behemoth had scraped off its shoe the look she gave him appeared no more or less unimpressed with him than it usually did.

"Didn't think I'd be seeing you again the way rumors were running," she rasped as she handed him the glasses. "Like the new face, though."

It was only then he caught his first glimpse of himself reflected back from the mirrored lenses.

His original features had reasserted themselves, which honestly caught him by surprise. He had been under the knife so many times he hadn't thought enough of the natural bone structure had been left behind to find its shape. It had been a long damned time since he had seen that narrow jaw and pointed nose. Apparently, his brief exposure to the sun had been enough for his skin to freckle. And _Christ_ , but he looked young without the work Carrington had put into adding the extra wear. Mid-forties wasn't any more honest a show of his age than twenty-nine, but it had still somehow felt less like a lie...

"It's an old one," he managed dully, still feeling caught off-guard.

The moment of uncharacteristic honesty passed unnoticed—or ignored—as Daisy let out a faint snort.

For a moment he found himself thinking about the old myths...the ones about mirrors. Total bullshit—well, _mostly_ bullshit—but there were times it almost felt true in a way. With the life he lived he had become used to looking into mirrors and other surfaces and not seeing himself reflected back in them. Even now, the reflection he saw belonged to some long-forgotten college drop-out who had gotten his dumb ass killed years before the War, not to him. Two-hundred years and only the eyes had really changed—ironic, given they were the only feature his surgeries hadn't touched. Only his eyes told the truth about him anymore. Only his eyes really felt like they were _his_...

All the more reason to keep them hidden, he thought as he slid the shades onto his face. 

New or old, it didn't matter. It wasn't the first time he had shown up in Goodneighbor with a different face. Daisy still always knew it was him. Most ghouls seemed to sense there was something off about him, but the oldest ones could _always_ tell... Those who were pre-War even managed to put a name to it, now and then. It had never been said in as many words between them, but he was sure that Daisy knew _exactly_ what he was. Though she tolerated his presence, he knew she had never really trusted him.

"So, Daisy, might I trouble you with an odd question?" he asked.

It was the first time he had strung more than a few words together, to his ear his disused voice sounded almost as battered and rough as hers was. She examined him with a skeptical glance for a moment before letting out a breath.

"Alright, let's hear it then."

"Assume for a moment I'd been...out of town for a while and lost track of time," he said, striving for flippancy in his tone. "How long ago was all that commotion over at Bunker Hill, would you say?"

And he watched as she blinked her dark eyes in surprise, the unpleasant hard line of her mouth relaxing into a frown. The passive hostility he was used to left her as she took in a short breath. He knew it was bad, then, before she even answered him.

"Kid," she said, her voice as soft as a ghoul's ever got, "that business went down more than a month and a half ago."

It was...a bit of a shock. Not a tremendous one—he had lost whole weeks and months before in recovering from a bad enough beating. Hell, he had spent the first few _decades_ after the bombs had fallen buried under rubble. A month's stasis for himself was hardly a problem, but with the current state of things it was a much longer time than the Railroad could afford to be out of action... 

He thought he did well in moderating his reaction to the news. He managed to maintain the blandly pleasant demeanor he had affected, as if he was shooting the breeze with a neighbor and not a ghoul who had never bothered to hide her dislike of him.

"Anything interesting happen in that time?"

"You could say _that_ and then some..." Daisy began slowly. "In case you honestly missed it, nearly a week ago the Brotherhood made their move against the Institute. And, for better or worse, those assholes actually won. The Institute's gone. Nothing but a crater now in the middle of Cambridge, the way I hear it."

For a moment he was too stunned to react, or to move—to even continue in the pretense of breathing. He thought it was that sudden, unnatural stillness that caught Daisy off guard. Just for a moment, for the first time in the long years he had known her, he thought she might actually have been afraid of him. It was slow, but he managed to bring himself back with a deliberate effort, shooting her his best, bright, plastic smile.

"Thanks for the update, Daisy," he said. "You're a peach."

He was out of practice lying with this face, however. He might have shown her too many teeth.

He found himself wandering away in something of a daze. Because it shouldn't have, but somehow it felt like the world had gone and ended on him all over again. It was one thing to drag himself free of the Railroad's ashes—he had done that before, more than once—but if the Institute was really gone then it had taken with it their long-held reason to fight. If the Institute had been destroyed by the Brotherhood's hands, every synth who had still been a captive there was most certainly dead. The Railroad might have dragged itself back from death almost as many times as he had, patched itself up and returned to the fight, but that had been when there was someone to fight _for_.

He had outlived a lot of things and he knew he still stood to outlive many more, but he had somehow never imagined the Railroad would be one of them. And suddenly that anger that had gripped him back in the crypt returned, full force—anger at _himself_ for having survived.

Because surviving was absolutely _pointless_. He had done enough surviving for more than one lifetime. His existence before and after the War had not been vastly different in character—feeding on vermin or the leavings of others, squatting in whatever dark hole he could find. Only the size and shape of the vermin had really changed. He had spent far too long—close to a century and a half—merely surviving before he had met _her_. And she had helped remind him what living was actually like—reminded him that he had ever known it on his own, before his death, before the War. Then in an eye-blink she had been gone, and once he had slaked his thirst for vengeance on those responsible the Railroad had been the only thing to give the life she had returned to him any meaning.

The Railroad and its cause had been the center of his entire purpose for more than fifty years. Now it was all gone, and he didn't know if there was even a place for him in a world without the Railroad or the Institute in it.


End file.
